Who to "thank" for our 1st pick in 2019

[Morgan423]

7 hours ago, FanSince88 said:

Santander has a -0.4 WAR.

I'm not even factoring Santander in.  Our season was over and unrecoverable at the three-week-in point. No reason to not let his Rule 5 time finish up.  

[Frobby]

On 9/18/2018 at 2:26 PM, weams said:

 

 

On 9/18/2018 at 2:59 PM, Aglets said:

Really cool article, thanks weams!

Gives us just a slight glimmer of hope that the worst team in modern baseball history could go from 43 wins to the World Series in 3 years.    Not that that should be our expectation.

It’s interesting to look back on how the Tigers went from a 43-win team to a 95-win team in three years.   They really only added three key players via the draft, two of whom were already in their system before the disastrous 2003 season — Curtis Granderson* (drafted in 2002), Justin Verlander* (2004) and Joel Zumaya* (2002).   Those guys contributed 10.5 rWAR to the 2006 Tigers.

By contrast, six key players were acquired via free agency — Ivan Rodriguez*, Magglio Ordonez, Marcus Thames, Kenny Rogers*, Todd Jones and Jason Grilli.   They contributed 10.1 rWAR in ‘06.

Several good players were acquired via trade: Placido Polanco, Carlos Guillen*,  Sean Casey (deadline deal), Nate Robertson*, Zach Miner (deadline deal).    They contributed 11.0 rWAR.

Key players who already were on the 2003 team and were still there in 2006 included Brandon Inge*, Craig Monroe, Omar Infante, Dmitri Young, Jeremy Bonderman*, Fernando Rodney and Jamie Walker.   Those players contributed 4.2 rWAR in 2003, 11.8 in 2006.

You can also throw in Craig Shelton, who was acquired in the Rule 5 draft after the ‘03 season and played 115 games for the ‘03 Tigers, providing 1.3 rWAR.

Players marked with an * contributed more than 2 WAR.   Interestingly, that omits Magglio Ordonez (1.9), who had 104 RBI and was an all-star that year.    

So what you see is that the Tigers built a four legged stool — several holdovers who got better (especially Inge and Bonderman), some good draft picks, some good trades, and some key free agent acquisitions.     And it didn’t all happen at once — Pudge, Guiilen, Thames and Robertson were added as early as ‘04, Ordonez, Polanco and Grilli in ‘05.

I think what this shows is there isn’t one right way to rebuild a team.    The idea that we should just stock our team with cheap, replacement level players for the next 2-3 years while waiting for the farm system to produce isn’t necessarily correct.